


Mapped by My Intrepid Fingers

by miera



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Kidnapping, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-06-04 09:35:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6652564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miera/pseuds/miera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The distance - emotional and physical - between Oliver and Felicity closes a bit more during a kidnapping. Set during the hiatus between S2 and S3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mapped by My Intrepid Fingers

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry to anyone hoping for more of "Blue Million Miles." It keeps stalling on me. Instead, have some touch-starved Oliver. ;)

It said something about her life that the first thought Felicity had when she came to was "Not again."

Her head hurt, her hands were tied behind her back, it was dark and she was getting tired of this crap. Ever since she started working with Oliver-

Oliver. He'd been with her when they left Verdant. When, presumably, she'd been kidnapped. Again.

As if the thought had prompted it, she heard his voice. "Felicity?" She craned her neck and through the gloom caught a glimpse of a familiar arm and a white t-shirt. Oliver was sitting on the chair behind hers, his back to her. How cliched. 

"Oliver?"

"Are you hurt?"

She took a brief inventory. "My head hurts but I'm assuming that's from whatever we were drugged with? We were drugged, right? Something hit my neck, it stung."

"Yes. Your hands are tied too?"

She flexed her arms. "Yes. And my shoulders are starting to hurt. What about you, are you okay? Do you have any idea where we are? How long we were out? Does Digg know we're missing, or anyone really?

"I'm not hurt and I don't know. Are you still wearing shoes?" 

She glanced down. "Um, no. Is that bad? That's bad right?"

She heard him huff out a frustrated breath. "They took our shoes." Digg had insisted Oliver keep a GPS tracker in his boot, but if whoever took them had taken their shoes, they might know about that. Ergo they might know he was the Arrow. "And our coats."

"My purse. Probably our phones." Oh shit. This was really bad. Whoever took them wasn't fooling around. Which is what you would do if you'd kidnapped the freaking Arrow.

"We're going to get out of this, okay?" When she didn't answer right away, his fingers reached out and touched her wrist briefly. Given the circumstances, she should not be noticing how warm his hands were or how his fingers felt brushing against the sensitive skin of her hand, but she couldn't help it. "Felicity?"

"Right." She took a deep breath, trying to calm her rising panic. "Any ideas on how exactly we're going to accomplish that?"

Before he could answer a door swung open and light exploded into the dark room. 

*****

Oliver had been about to get out of the zip ties when the door opened. If he'd been alone, he would have waited to see who exactly had grabbed him and why first but Felicity was here and that changed the priority. Getting her out of this place and to safety was the most important thing. 

Four heavily armed men came into the room. As Oliver's eyes adjusted, he managed to note that the four of them spread out to surround the two chairs. There was a gun pointed right at his chest. He kept still. These guys were professionals, whoever they were. He couldn't take them all out without risking Felicity getting hurt. He'd have to wait until they left to get free, he decided, and hope that happened fast.

The man who was standing behind Oliver, facing Felicity, spoke first. "Felicity Smoak, I presume?"

Oliver froze. 

"Who wants to know?" He had to admire her sass even though it was stupid to goad these guys.

"We'll get to that later. You are the Felicity Smoak who hacked ARGUS, the FBI and the Starling City PD on multiple occasions?"

Shit. They hadn't grabbed him and Felicity. They had grabbed Felicity and him. 

The man facing Oliver pulled out a black stick and there was nothing Oliver could do.

"I'm not telling you anything," Felicity responded to her interrogator. Oliver got hit with the taser and yelled. He couldn't help it. Those things fucking hurt. 

He could hear her screaming. "Stop! Stop it! What are you doing to him?"

The pain stopped and Oliver sagged, gasping for air. 

"In case you haven't grasped how this works, Miss Smoak, I ask questions, you answer. I tell you to do something, you do it. You refuse, we'll take it out on your friend." 

There was a silence, which was generally not a good sign when it came to Felicity. Finally, her voice calmer than Oliver would have expected, she answered the guy. "That seemed excessive given that you clearly already know who I am."

The man laughed, the noise reverberating through the metal room. "That's probably a fair point. I can see you're going to be a handful, Miss Smoak."

Oliver was grabbed and pulled to his feet. He managed to swing around and finally get a look at Felicity. Her eyes were huge and she was clearly fighting to stay in control of her fear. He shook his head in anticipation of the apology he could see on her face. 

The goon squad marched them out the door and Oliver realized they were on a ship, some sort of cargo ship by the look of the deck. Fucking hell. Oliver could go the rest of his damn life without setting foot on a boat of any kind ever again. 

No land in sight either, at least not on this side. They must have been unconscious for a long time to get from Starling City to wherever this was. He really wanted to know where his boots were. 

They were pushed into a room that resembled an office. A bank of computers was set up and Oliver assumed this was the reason they were here. 

The leader delivered a brief monologue, explaining that he needed Felicity to hack him and his men off the grid, erase their identities, set up new ones and steal a whole shit load of money for them. Oliver couldn't help thinking this was a stupid plan. Giving Felicity access to a computer with internet was basically like handing him a bow and quiver. 

Felicity seemed skeptical herself. "And if I refuse?"

The goon holding him dug a hand into Oliver's shoulder. He grunted, mostly for effect.

"Well, since I need you mostly uninjured, I'll take it out on your boyfriend," the leader said calmly.

"He's not my boyfriend," Felicity blurted out reflexively.

The guy rolled his eyes. "Whatever. I'm certain you don't want him to be hurt because of you, though."

He gave a nod and the hand left Oliver's shoulder. He braced himself but it was pointless. The taser jabbed into his back and he cried out again, falling to his knees. He could hear Felicity shouting his name and struggling against whoever was holding her. He managed to tilt his head back. "Felicity." He caught her eyes and shook his head. "Not for me." He knew she would remember. He could handle the pain, as long as they weren't hurting her. He didn't want her to give in to these bastards.

"Oliver, I can't…" _I can't let them hurt you_ , he could see her thinking. 

The leader stepped forward and grabbed her chin sharply, making Oliver want to jump up, but his legs were still cramping from the shock. 

The guy got into her face. "If you need me to be more persuasive, I can have my men break some of his fingers. Slowly. Or we can just get on with this. What will it be?"

*****

Felicity did her best to meet the dirtbag's eyes. "I have conditions," she spat out, yanking her chin free and trying to channel Sara. Sara, of course, would've simply killed the four men in the room and gotten on with it, but Felicity knew her best chance was to get access to the computer and get help. 

He looked almost amused. "Oh? Name them."

She nodded to Oliver. "He stays with me. No separating us." If they took Oliver out of her sight she would have no idea what they were doing to him. Also these guys clearly had no idea they had the Arrow in their custody, but if it came to an actual fight, she needed to be with Oliver rather than him having to find her. 

"And you said he wasn't special to you," the man sneered. "Very well."

"I'm not done yet," she snapped. The four men bristled and she swallowed, steeling her nerves. "Second, privacy. I'm not working with an audience of gun-toting lunatics." 

It was a pretty obvious ploy, and he not only saw through it, he backhanded her across the face. Oliver shot to his feet but he was grabbed before he could do anything. Felicity appreciated the chivalry, but it was better for these guys not to know what Oliver was capable of yet.

"You don't really think I'm stupid enough to leave you unsupervised with a bunch of computers, do you?" the leader snarled at her. 

"You have no idea the damage I can do to your system or you, do you?" she managed to snap back. "Hurting us will get you nowhere." 

The leader shared a look with one of the men and visibly pulled in his anger. "Fine. The armed guards will wait outside, but you will have an audience." He beckoned to the corner and a weedy looking guy with short black hair and an unpleasant face appeared. "Mr. Cline will be watching over your shoulder as you work. If he sees you attempting to call for help or in any way alerting the authorities, he will inform me, and your friend will be punished."

Time, Felicity thought. They needed time. She needed to talk to Oliver, come up with a strategy, figure out how much this Cline knew about computers, whether she'd be able to fool him, whether Digg was already looking for them, exactly how long it had been since they'd been grabbed, just… there was a lot of information she was lacking. Playing along seemed to be the best way to get what she needed, so when the man asked her "Are we clear?" she nodded. 

Then she said, "You also need to untie me. And I need to use the bathroom. And I'm hungry." 

He laughed again. Felicity hadn't known how unpleasant laughter could sound. But her hands were cut loose a minute later. One of the goons marched her and Oliver to the small, windowless bathroom at the end of the office and shoved them both inside. "Wait, what-"

"Your rule, sweetheart," the guy smirked. "No separating you two. You've got five minutes."

Then he shut the door. Well, at least she and Oliver were alone. 

"Felicity-"

"Don't tell me I shouldn't have agreed, okay?" she snapped in a whisper before Oliver could go on. "Our best chance is for me to alert Digg where we are if he doesn't know already. I need access to the computer to do that." 

"I wasn't going to argue," Oliver told her, making her look up in shock. "You're right. We have no idea where we are or how many men are on the ship, and no way off it. You need to get on those computers. What can I do to help?"

For a brief moment Felicity savored the fact that Oliver Queen was asking her what to do. Tactics and strategy were his domain, Felicity was well aware of that, but in this situation, getting them out of here was on her. "I need to know how much Cline knows about computers." Oliver nodded. "I'll try a few things, stall, see if he notices. But…" If she got caught, Oliver was going to pay the price.

They were already face to face in a tiny room, but Oliver shifted closer to her anyway. "I can handle it. Don't worry about me."

"Too late." 

He gave her that tiny smile. "We're going to get out of this, Felicity. I promise." 

She let out a deep breath. "Okay I really do have to pee, so could you…"

"Oh, right." Oliver politely turned his back so she could get her clothes out of the way enough to sit down on the toilet, firmly not thinking about the fact that she was taking some of her clothes off, at least partially, with Oliver in the room. "Um, can you, I don't know, hum or sing or something?"

He started to turn around and stopped himself. "What?"

"I can't go with you standing there listening to me!" she hissed. 

"Can't you just turn on the faucet?"

Oh. She hadn't thought of that. The noise of the water wasn't very loud but it was better than nothing. 

When she was done, Oliver gestured for them to trade places. She flipped the seat up again and then hesitated. Her face was flushing horribly but it had to be said. "Oliver, your hands are tied." There was no way for him to get his pants undone or… well, _aim_ with his hands trapped behind his back, which left only her to help and she could probably hack whatever these assholes wanted her to hack but helping Oliver pee was over the line of the universe, really.

He actually grinned at her and lifted his arms. The zip ties were in pieces. He was just holding his arms behind him like they were still tied. 

"Oh thank Google," she sighed, "Because I don't think we could've come back from that." She stepped to the door and kept her back to him. Despite everything, the sound of Oliver unzipping his pants made a tiny shiver go through her. She was officially hopeless. 

Felicity washed her hands once he was done and the door jerked open. Time to get the show on the road. 

*****

Mr. Cline, whoever he was, appeared to be smarter than the average hired thug, unfortunately. After six hours of Felicity working, Oliver was pretty sure his ribs were bruised, he was bleeding down the side of his face and he probably had a black eye. It was far from the worst beating he'd had, but he stayed still on the floor next to Felicity's feet and made a show of wincing in pain with every movement. 

Felicity had tried a couple of times to sneak something into her work and Cline had called the guards. The third time the leader had come back and pointed out to Felicity that she could still use the computer without her legs. Her horrified look had been enough for Oliver to try to communicate to her silently to end her attempts. 

After that she had just worked steadily for a couple of hours without Cline interrupting her. Finally she leaned back and stretched her neck. "I've got a couple programs running. It's going to take a few hours for the code to compile," she informed Cline. "Now I really need food, and rest. For both of us." 

Cline called for the guards. Two of them came into the room and Felicity got up and hurried to the bathroom. She came back with a wad of paper towels. "Oliver?"

"I'm okay," he told her quietly. She was pale and there were dark circles under her eyes.

She started wiping the blood from his face. "I'm so sorry, Oliver."

"Hey." He had to keep up the ruse that his arms were still tied, so he nudged his cheek against her hand, smiling a little at the role reversal. Felicity was usually the one making this speech to him. "This isn't your fault." 

"It is, though." 

"This is on them," he told her, nodding toward the men standing near the door. "Not you." 

She pressed her lips together tightly and Oliver had to push back the desire to reach up and touch her face to get her to stop. 

Felicity leaned forward, as if she was looking closely at the cut on his head, but she whispered, "It's been about six hours since we were taken. We're about a mile outside Starling City harbor." Her breath tickled his ear, making goosebumps break out on his skin. Oliver pushed aside the tingling feeling in his stomach from the sensation. 

Okay. They weren't far from the coast. He'd feared they were in the middle of the ocean somewhere. But jumping off the boat and swimming wasn't an option, not with the temperature of the water. He didn't even know if Felicity could swim. It was also dark out now. He weighed their options but there was still one crucial piece of information he was missing. "Ask for your shoes," he murmured to her.

Felicity paused and met his eyes just long enough to confirm she understood, then she went back to cleaning the blood from his face and neck. 

Fearless Leader came back with some protein bars that he tossed in Oliver's lap, smirking as he did so since as far as he knew, Oliver's arms were trapped behind him. Felicity didn't miss a beat, though, huffing and bending over to grab the food. "Make sure there are no nuts," Oliver cautioned and found himself on the receiving end of a Felicity stare that made him want to squirm. Like he was going to forget that she had a major food allergy? 

She shook it off and turned to their captor. "Can I have my shoes back? My feet are really cold from sitting here and I can't concentrate when my feet are cold. My brain just keeps reminding me how cold my feet are and it distracts me from whatever I'm doing. So if you want me to not be distracted, it would be a good idea to return my shoes..."

It was about a 3 on a scale of Felicity's babbles, really, but the goons weren't used to her talking the way Oliver was, so the guy blinked at her a couple of times before he gave an order to one of the others. A few minutes later, both her heels and Oliver's boots were dumped on the floor next to them. 

For the first time since they woke up, Oliver felt a surge of relief. His shoes were intact, which meant the tracker in them was active. 

*~*~*~*~*

There were only a few things in the world Felicity had total faith in, but John Diggle was one of them. Oliver's shoes were here, which meant Digg could track them. One look between her and Oliver was enough to communicate everything. They just had wait and Digg would come for them. 

Which meant she would need to stall, but she could do that. Cline was smart enough to catch her more obvious attempts at alerting the authorities, but he didn't know enough code to read what she was doing. Her couple of blatant attempts had masked some more sophisticated hacking on her part. She just felt bad that Oliver had been the one being punished for her distractions. Although he looked more frustrated over not fighting back than anything.

She finished the protein bar and chugged some of the water. Oliver cleared his throat. "Um, Felicity?" He looked at the other protein bar and raised his eyebrows. It took her a moment to realize what he meant. In order to keep up the ruse that his arms were bound, he couldn't just eat on his own. 

"Oh, right." She tore the wrapper open and then hesitated for just a moment. She was going to have to feed Oliver. Oh boy. This was going to fill her fantasies about him for months. 

She broke a modest piece of the bar off and held it out to him. Oliver opened his mouth obediently, which did not make her pulse race at all, thank you very much, and she did an awkward little toss to avoid touching his lips. She forced her eyes away, since watching him chew would be too creepy for her comfort. When she heard him swallow, she looked back at him and he nodded. She offered him another bite, but this time a crumb fell on his chin and she reached out to wipe it away with her thumb automatically. 

His stubble was longer than normal, prickling against her skin, but his lower lip was soft as she brushed over it. A weird shock traveled up her arm, warmth flowing through her body and her brain conjured up multiple other, far more pleasant, scenarios of her feeding him, which did not help her current predicament. Oliver's eyes darkened as he looked at her, like he was thinking the same thing, which was ridiculous and that snapped her back to reality. She jerked her hand back with a muttered apology. Something - almost like hurt? - flashed across his face before she looked away. 

When he had swallowed, he asked, "Water?" The bottle was trickier to manage. She had to be careful not to tip it too far forward and risk dousing him. She just stopped herself from touching his face to help him drink.

They finished their food without any further awkward moments and she insisted he drink the entire bottle of water to keep from getting dehydrated. They had to endure another joint trip to the bathroom, during which they agreed in hurried whispers to bide their time and wait for Digg, and Felicity settled herself back in the crappy desk chair in front of the computer. 

Oliver had let her help him ease back down onto the floor next to her chair to keep up the ruse to the guards that he was hurting. When she was seated, he scooted over a bit and to her shock, leaned his head against her thigh. Her skirt was long enough that he was nowhere near her bare leg, but it was still really weird to have him that close to her. 

Not bad weird, but yeah. Weird. 

It also placed him in between her and the guards, and when Cline came back, he had to stay a couple feet farther away from Felicity because Oliver was in the way. Which at least explained why Oliver practically had his head in her lap. 

A couple more hours went by. She dozed a bit in the chair waiting for one of her programs to finish. She threw a couple of intentional bugs into the next stage, so that it would take longer. She was so busy thinking about how to rewrite the patch on the next stage to make it fail that she didn't notice what she was doing until Oliver let out a tiny noise. 

She looked down. Her hand was in Oliver's hair. She was actually scratching her fingers over his scalp absently, playing with his hair while she brainstormed. 

Her whole body was frozen. She had no idea what to do.

*~*~*~*~*

Oliver couldn't help the small sound of pleasure as Felicity's fingernails hit a sensitive spot at his temple. Despite the ache in his ribs and the men outside the doors with machine guns, he hadn't felt this relaxed in a while. He didn't even know when Felicity had started touching him, really. He had been resting as much as possible, his body shielding her as much as he could from their captors. It was better that they think he was tired, so he leaned against her leg, which was at a perfect height while he was slouching on the floor. At some point, her hands fell into her lap and he could feel her fingers tapping and moving as she worked, then one of her hands came to rest on his head. 

He didn't move or say anything, wondering if she wanted reassurance, but then her fingers had carded through his hair and his eyes had closed. It felt good. He had so little physical contact with other people, at least of the non-threatening kind, it was a rarity for anyone to touch him this calmly. He was pretty sure she wasn't doing it intentionally. He'd seen her fidget with anything handy while she was working out a problem plenty of times. 

Felicity's hand disappeared periodically to go back to her keyboard, but it would come back and start moving again and he made no move to stop her. When her fingernails scratched lightly over his scalp, though, Oliver damn near started purring. If they hadn't been being held hostage, he might have. He was dangerously close to turning into a puddle as it was. 

He didn't know this was a thing for him until this moment. And her touch wasn't even sexual. It was... _intimate_ , but also incredibly comforting. Like they were people who were used to being in each other's personal space a lot, and not in the "we're partners in fighting crime and risking our lives and patching each other up on a regular basis" way. Like this was normal, her touching him without fear or hesitation. Oliver had no idea how badly he missed this sensation until this moment.

Admittedly, his mind started to slip down the road of feeling Felicity's fingers in his hair for other, less platonic reasons, but he cut that off. He just wanted to bask in this feeling a little longer. 

He felt it when she became aware of what she was doing. Her hand stilled and tension filled the muscles in her leg. He was afraid to look up, afraid to break the bubble that was around them despite their circumstances. Instead he turned, nuzzling his head against her thigh, trying to tell her without words that it was okay, that he wasn't objecting. That he wanted her to keep touching him like this forever. 

The thought didn't scare him as much as he would have expected it to.

After a moment, her hand started moving again and he let out a contented sigh. He heard a soft huff of laughter from above him and warmth filled his chest. He wasn't used to feeling like this, almost hopeful, and their circumstances weren't exactly the right time and place for him to be thinking about Felicity and the future, but the longing in him was getting harder and harder to fight. 

The relative peace was broken a minute later. There were a couple of sharp thuds and an audible bang from outside the door. Cline took a few steps toward the door, drawing the sidearm he was carrying and Oliver reacted on instinct. He leapt up from the floor, ignoring the shrieking protest of his shoulders from keeping his arms behind him all this time, and disarmed Cline. He put the man in a choke hold until he passed out.

Felicity had jumped up and retrieved Cline's gun. She handed it to Oliver and grabbed their shoes as they made their way to the door. "Stay behind me," he told her, probably needlessly. 

The deck was cold but their bare feet allowed them to move quietly. There were sounds of fighting come from the front of the ship. Oliver would've moved faster but his priority was Felicity, so he checked carefully around every corner. He was pretty sure he recognized the grunting noises he could hear now.

They rounded one last corner and saw Roy and Digg both engaged in fighting the remaining goons. One guy who had been knocked down lurched to his feet, heading for Digg's back. Oliver was already bringing his weapon up. "Digg, down!" 

Digg dropped and Oliver shot the attacker in the shoulder. Roy knocked the last guy out with a hard kick and that was that. 

*~*~*~*~*

_A year later..._

Felicity was reading an article on her tablet when Oliver crawled into the bed. She smiled in spite of herself. Sure it had been a couple weeks since they left Starling City, but she was still not used to sharing a bed with Oliver as a regular thing. 

He leaned over and kissed her lightly, then stretched out alongside her on the bed. "What are you reading?"

"Article in _Wired_." She didn't say anything else for a minute, not above teasing him a little. She might not be used to being with Oliver but she was used to this part of their routine. When she finally glanced at him, he was very close to pouting. She shifted her tablet to one side. "Oh come here already."

Oliver moved eagerly and rested his head against her stomach, his arm wrapping around her hips. She ran her hand through his short hair, nails drifting lightly over his scalp, and he made this contented noise in his throat that made her heart leap every time she heard it. Since his initial, embarrassed confession about this a few days into their road trip, it had become part of their routine whenever Felicity was reading. She played with his hair idly while she finished the article, cherishing the way Oliver's body relaxed into hers and he drifted off to sleep.


End file.
